Some folks have bemoaned the loss of “full gauges” (ammeter, coolant temperature, oil pressure) ever since “idiot lights” appeared back in…the dark ages. Or more like the late 50s, early 60s, except of course for dear old Chrysler, and Checker too. I suppose I shouldn’t even enter this debate, as I’ve been driving my ’77 Dodge Chinook without a gas gauge for over a decade, and more recently without its temperature gauge. But hey, I can watch the (rock solid) oil pressure while I’m rolling down the highway! And the ammeter gives a reassuring surge after the engine lights up.

No doubt, the manufacturers saved a couple of bucks by replacing the gauges with warning lights. But I suspect it was a bit more than that too. By the mid-sixties, as drivers spent ever more time in their cars, and driving was second-nature, I suspect fewer and fewer driver ever scanned the non-essential gauges; a warning light going off was much more likely to get their attention.

And full gauges were still generally available, although all-too often in utterly absurd locations, like these on a Camaro. I didn’t realize until just now that the gas gauge was relocated to down there too.

Well, the question I pose is not so much about old cars, but newer ones. Yes, I like to have full gauges on a vintage car, as the odds of something going out of normal were so much greater, like keeping an eye on the temperature going over a mountain pass in the summer. And yes, driving an older car makes one feel a bit less secure, and it’s nice to know things are (mostly) in order. Strictly speaking, I have always felt that the both a gauge and an idiot light would have been the best solution, as even the most fanatic gauge-watcher might easily miss the sudden change.

But a car built in the past couple of decades? Fuggadaboutit. Overheating? Sudden drop in oil pressure? You’re more likely to be hit by an asteroid. In fact, if you’d asked me if my Acura TSX had a temperature gauge, I wouldn’t have been able to tell you for sure. But there it is; never looked it. I guess it makes for a symmetrical layout in the IP.

What about you? Still like to see full gauges on a modern car? Thought it was a crime to get rid of them?

145 Comments

Outside of enthusiasts a full set of gauges means absolutely nothing. Even if my wife saw low oil pressure or low voltage on the ammeter it’s not likely it would mean anything to her.

I wouldn’t mind having them, it would make diagnosing problems easier for me, but to the average person it doesn’t matter, they just take their car to the shop and get it fixed like any other appliance.

“I wouldn’t mind having them, it would make diagnosing problems easier for me, but to the average person it doesn’t matter, they just take their car to the shop and get it fixed like any other appliance.”

+1

I don’t like running blind, but then most vehicles I own are at least 10 years old by the time I get them – so my opinion doesn’t really count.

That being said, huge gas gauges really bug me… probably because of how much they contribute to the feeling that you’re driving an appliance. They bug me enough, in fact, that I’ve retrofitted factory ‘full gauges’ into a few of my 10-15 year old cars just so I didn’t have to stare at it.

Where I really NEED gauges is in a truck, especially when towing or hauling heavy loads. Fortunately, all the trucks I’ve been around lately (mostly GM products) have had ’em.

I’ve often thought transmission temp would be a nice addition, though… not necessarily as a dedicated gauge, but just by making it available through a DIC-type display. (I understand that some newer trucks actually do offer this!)

I don’t exactly miss full gauges on newer cars, but I do like the idea of adding aftermarket gauges as they become necessary. It’s a chance to add your own element and revel in your modification at every glance. I’ve swapped a turbo motor into a plain-jane subaru legacy and I love seeing the aftermarket boost gauge and wideband o2 jump around every time I drive it. It’s like it’s alive on a whole new level. Plus the aftermarket is huge for both gauges and receptacles so you can really have fun with your choices.

my 04 VW Golf Estate has gages and a tach, the oil pressure and temp gages never so much as twitch once the engine is running (for the oil) and warmed up (for the temp). when we first got it I took note of the cruising revs (2000rpm at 100kph) and probably haven’t looked at the tach since. I genuinely love this car but I doubt I would love it any less with idiot lights

The reason your gauges don’t twitch is because they’re not really gauges. More like idiot lights with needles.

Most modern “gauges” are designed so that as long at the relevant info is between the allowable “high” and “low” values, the needle just moves to the middle and stays there. Makes temp gauges especially useless, since you won’t be able to monitor an increase if you’ve got a problem. Normal, normal, normal, RED!

When I had my 95 Thunderbird I noticed the oil pressure always read the same, cold engine, warm engine, idling engine, 2,500 rpm engine. I looked at the wiring diagram and it shows the oil pressure sender as a switch and a half watt resistor mounted on the instrument panel circuit board in line with the pressure gauge. Idiot gauge.

With the early versions of Ford’s idiot gauge you can convert them to a fully functional gauge. Remove the cluster and find the resistor on the back of the flexible circuit board. You need to bypass this resistor with a jumper or remove it and put in a jumper. Then remove the oil pressure switch and replace it with an oil pressure sender from a 70’s/80’s Ford with the same engine of if it a new engine match the thread sizes.

Richard

Posted June 24, 2014 at 5:27 AM

I was going to do that, however I decided that if Ford would mislead customers with their new 4.6 engine I would replace it with an Olds Aurora. The person who bought the Thunderbird put over 200,000 miles on the engine, trouble free. The 4RW70 transmission would be rebuilt every 60,000 miles. Mostly due to a violent shudder from torque converer when locking up or unlocking. Ford said they all do that and to replace the
fluid with synthetic.

You are exactly right…My BMW temp gauge stays right in the middle as soon as its warmed up…it could be 0 or 100 out…the only time it will move is if there is a problem…The service tech said BMW was sick of ninnies complaining if the needle was nudging past the middle thinking there was a problem

It’s the same way with the E46’s. Unfortunately, the engine has so little coolant in it and the reservoir tank attached to the radiator has a tendency to split and spill its guts, once the needle hits HOT and the warning light goes off, you’ve probably already done expensive damage… GM/Ford?MOPAR don’t have a monopoly on bad ideas….

My ’13 Beetle has a “gauge package” located in a wart on top of the dashboard (why do we still call them that?). It displays oil temp (marginally of use – I use it to know when I can fire up the heater in the wintertime), has a stopwatch (why?) and a turbo boost gauge (eye candy). I’d rather have the tray that comes with the base trim levels.

The main gauge cluster, er, display is a combination analog (speedometer) and digital unit. I normally leave it set to display speed (as it does so with a very large font that I can read without glasses). About the only other thing I will use it for is to switch over to the odometer when I fill up with fuel. The rest is only marginally useful, and most of it I can’t read anyway without digging out my cheaters.

The New Beetle gauges were about perfect: speed, tach and fuel. Everything else was a warning light.

My ’64 Type I of course had speed (of marginal use with only 40hp!) and a fuel gauge that was so inaccurate as to only be a suggestion. The odometer was my fuel gauge! It did of course have two idiot lights (oil and generator). Of course, if you were at one with the zen of the car, you really didn’t need *any* of the gauges. John Muir would be proud.

at least a 64 VW type ! has a fuel gage. My first car was a 57 VW it had no fuel gage, when the engine starts to sputter you reach down and flip the reserve valve and then you have about another gallon to get you to a filling station, where you had better remember to flip the reserve valve back shut when you fill up

I have heard of exotic car owners demanding that their engines be rebuilt because their buddy who had the same kind of car had 5 or 10 more psi on his oil pressure gauge at idle or some such BS.

Back in the times when car engines were finicky and prone to failure, having gauges to warn you of a warm engine or falling oil pressure often meant the difference between an inconvenient repair or a total rebuild for the observant driver. Remember how often we had to replace thermostats and voltage regulators on cars made before the 80s? Having to drop the oil pan and replace an oil pump or clear the pickup screen of sludge happened sometimes. Nowdays with the finer tolerances, better gas and oil, and computer management, that’s not so crucial. It’d still be nice to have, but gauges are not a deal killer for me now.

With the touch screen stereos that a lot of cars have now, why not add a gauge option for the enthusiasts like modern planes have with the glass cockpit?

I don’t mind the idiot lights on my instrument panel. The oil light suddenly lighting will get my attention Right. Now. where I might not notice a gauge going into the red.

I do however find the check engine light to be a nuisance. Modern ones light to warn of a needed oil change and of impending engine doom. It lights for stuff I can delay 80% of the time, but I dare not delay because of that high-impact 20%. Fortunately, my mechanic lets me just drop by when it lights for a quick code check.

My mitsubishi magna has most of the idiot lights in the normal place, but has the oil pressure and fuel lights high up on the centre console, where I never look. Utterly stupid – even if they did light up, I probably wouldn’t notice for a while.

I like having a coolant temp and oil press. gauge on an older car to keep an eye on those vital functions. It helps with peace of mind and spotting problems early. Of course this assumes you check your gauges which I do.

I had a ’78 280Z that burned so much oil you could tell when it was low from a drop in the oil pressure reading. Friends have noticed a slight rise in water temps and found that a head gasket was starting to leak. Early intervention on a HG can avoid all sorts of nasty things like overheating, a cracked head and coolant in the crankcase.

I find oil temp gauges fairly worthless if you have water temp and oil pressure. Unless the car is air-cooled of course. My ’78 Scirocco had oil temp and not pressure which stuck me as odd, though a rise in oil temps always meant the oil was low. Oil level gauges are terrific to have.

Another thing I like about gauges on an older car is that they look so cool and make the thing feel more alive. One reason I’ve always liked the ’66 Mustang more than the ’65 was more gauges.

I do think any car with a gauge should also have a redundant warning light. It wouldn’t bother me not to have gauges on a new car, unless I planned to keep it for a long time.

Some cars (including my Scion) illuminate a blue light until the car warms up. Once that feature came to be, I was okay with the idiot light thing.

See, I once had a FWD Cadillac that only had an overtemp light. Then the thermostat stuck open. The FI brain, noticing the coolant wasn’t “yet” up to temperature, made the A/F mixture very rich. This, in turn, plugged up the catcon so bad that it stalled the engine. That cost me $500, just because I had no way of knowing the engine was running cold.

I’ve always like the ‘cold engine’ light (blue on my xB, yellow on 60’s Chevies) because it tells you when you can switch the heater fan on. I hate having cold air blown on me in the winter, and my (usually female) passengers are always insistant that I turn the heat on “right now”. At least this shows them when they’ll actually get heat.

That is the thing I hated the most on my XB was some idiot in Toyota decided it was more important to allow a person to always see the clock then to have a temp gauge. My 2012 had a coolant cold light and a coolant hot light but no gauge BUT the 2008-2010 XB’s did have the temp gauge. The temp gauge is very important to me because I had a 1989 Buick Century that had a cooling issue when I was driving and had it not had the gauge on it(the 89-93 Centurys had the wiring for the gauge near the engine so all you needed was the temp gauge, metal contacts, sending unit and 30 mins of your time to install it and and disasemble/assemble the cluster to add the gauge and contacts(No wiring or anything) it cost me $30 for the parts) I would have cooked the engine before the dang light came on. As it was I was able to pull off safely to the side of the road and tow it home(It had a bad radiator cap which would not let the pressure vent and thus blew out the bottom rad hose)

My current daily driver Fiesta has no temp gauge. Ever since I had a Peugeot 104 overheat on me and cook the head gasket, I’ve been a strong believer in temp gauges, but after I’d done 250K in 2 Ford Focuses and the needles never moved I guess I’ve got to move with the times

I never understood why almost all cars now have tachs, yet 95% are automatics.
Its even more ridiculous with trucks. A base model stick most likely doesnt have a tach, but the automatic-equipped uplevel model does. This was the case when I bought the Tundra. Base manual 6-speed V-6 was tachless, V-8 (with mandatory automatic) included a tach. Of course both included temp, oil pressure and volts.

On our Ranger, the tach option deleted two analog gauges, since they both occupied the same spot in the dash.

True. The first time in a new automatic car, it can be fun to see where they set the change points, and how they vary with throttle input. After 300,000km you don’t tend to worry about it though. Except when towing, when I shift manually. The box could probably handle the chore, but this old guy likes to know what gear he’s in for towing.

So I guess this part of the 1975-1979 Cadillac Seville – GM’s Deadly Sin #11 article no longer applies…

That Cadillac was clueless about the rise of Mercedes and BMW was evident in the Seville’s interior design and instrument panel. Let’s not waste time analyzing them; it was obvious which one pointed to the future. Cadillac still insisted that it had something unique, or at least distinctly American, to say about the design of luxury-car interiors and instrument panels until finally caving in with a very M-B-inspired look in the gen4 Seville.

😀

I don’t think full gauges are necessary for most cars/drivers, but I’d also question what the desire to permanently get rid of them would be besides manufacturers cheapening out(all while cars are getting more expensive). If they never did matter I’d say the argument for or against them is and always has been for fad driven aesthetics, including on cars like the speedo/gas equipped Seville vs 450SEL with full round instrumentation.

I was talking about the design of the IP, as well as the interior in general, not whether it had gauges or not. I make that very clear, in my last few words “a very M-B-inspired look in the gen4 Seville.” There’s more to an IP than the gauges.

FWIW, back in the 70s, in a high performance car like the MBZ 450, it was a good idea.

That reminds me of a pretty awesome & funny story. When the Ford Falcon GTHO Phase III was released in 1971, a writer & photographer from Wheels magazine had one for a weekend and long story short they woke up Monday morning in a regional city 200 miles from Melbourne. They covered that distance in 2 hours on a narrow 2-lane highway, passing through probably 20 towns along the way.

Around a quarter of the way along there are a lot of straight level roads, so the photog climbed into the rear seat and took photos that showed the tacho on the 6150 rev limiter and the speedo off the 140 mph clock. The magazine thought that was a bit much to publish, and re-touched the speedo to show 100 mph which was the top of 3rd gear.

The rev limiter was in place to protect against warranty claims for over-revving the 780cfm-carbed 351C, which it would do as the highest speed reached at Bathurst was 154 mph or so. Ironically the rev limiter is now one of the parts the date code and paint dab restorers struggle to find.

Indeed John, that was Mel Nichols driving and Uwe Kuessner photographing. I remember reading the story with awe in Wheels (albeit in the late 80s as I began amassing and reading the full set). I reckon that photo is easily the most well-known among gearheads in both NZ and Australia! It’s certainly one of the things that cemented the GTHO as an Australian and Ford legend – of course it also contibuted to the so-called Supercar Scare… Here’s the (non touched-up) photo and an update on the stopry from Mel himself, courtesy of Classic & Sports Car magazine:

John H

Posted June 26, 2014 at 5:08 PM

What I forgot to say was what they did was not even breaking the law! I understand that they did observe the speed limits in the towns and cities they passed through, but there wasn’t a formal open road speed limit at the time. You could be booked for dangerous driving (or something like that) if a police officer thought so, which would depend on the road, weather, traffic, your vehicle and yourself.

When asked by a reporter if he ever looked at the gauges during a race, Darryl Waltrip’s response was “Why? I’m just going to drive ’til the bitch blows anyway.”

While at Bondurant driving a 280Z, we were told to keep an eye on the gauges. The speedo and tach were directly in front of the driver, the oil pressure, water temp, and volt gauges were in the center of the dash. Not the greatest placement for a driver doing his best just to keep the car on the road. I was too intent doing the job at hand to do anything but look straight ahead. Fortunately my car suffered coincidental failures-it blew one of the rear CV joints and coasted to a stop. As I got out of the car, wondering what had happened (I thought that I had blown the clutch), I heard all of these popping and hissing noises coming from the engine compartment. Gee, is that what a blown clutch sounds like? Once back in the pits I was informed that in addition to a busted CV the water pump drive belt had been thrown and that the temp gauge was pegged. I was asked when I last looked at the gauges. I lied my ass off and said it was about a couple of laps ago. Thankfully, once cooled down, the engine would still turn over.

Today, race cars that still use analog gauges (NASCAR and other roundy-rounders) use an AutoMeter or similar gauge that, in addition to using a pointer and numerals, has a face that will turn red if a reading is in the danger zone.

But as others have mentioned, you could have the entire gauge cluster erupt in pyrotechnics and certain drivers wouldn’t get the message. Like my wife, on our honeymoon. After lunch in El Paso, TX we switched drivers and my wife took over the driving. I took a nap and when I woke up we switched drivers. Once behind the wheel I noticed that the ammeter light was glowing a bright red. I asked my bride how long the light had been that way and the answer was “El Paso”. Great. The next town where a Fiat alternator could be sourced was San Antonio, a half a day’s driving away. With an overnight battery charge, we made it the next day.

Gauges…hmmm, looks like about half of you aren’t really “car guys” in the traditional sense. Gauges tell you what your motor is doing at all times and provide a baseline. There’s a reason that modern airplane cockpits still have a pantload of gauges. Pilots need to know what their craft is doing. My car with an automatic is so quiet that I appreciate the tach to know that it’s still idling when I’m stopped in traffic. I check the oil pressure at speed and the temp gauge when stuck in traffic on a hot day. Heat is the biggest cause of engine damage. I’d love to have a manifold temp gauge and a transmission pressure and temp gauge too. Below my gauges there is an array of lights that tell me about SRS and ABS and light bulbs out, but real gauges tell me what my motor is doing at all times. But then, that’s just me,my newest car is 25 years old….

Well, as a matter of facts, it turns out that way too many commercial pilots can’t even really “fly” their planes, because they’ve become so dependent on the auto pilot, auto throttle, and auto other stuff. When a gauge goes wacky, they don’t even know how to respond appropriately. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_447

As noted elsewhere by other commenters, temperature gauges aren’t really “gauges” anymore, as they don’t provide an analog representation of reality. Anyway, no modern car is going to overheat when stuck in traffic on a hot day unless something is wrong. In which case, there’s really nothing to be doen about it anyway.

Update: I see your car is 25 years old; that might change things a bit…

For airside classic enthusiasts the story of Qantas flight 32, an Airbus A380 that suffered an ‘uncontained’ failure of #1 engine may be interesting. I heard an interview with the head pilot describing how there were so many alarms set off that the crew could not respond to them all, let alone work through all the checklists to establish what was wrong.

Instead they ignored the bombardment of alarms and after making sure the plane was still flying, worked on trying to establish what was actually still working. Even after landing it was tricky because they had an engine they couldn’t shut down, fuel leaks and hot brakes, so they actually delayed evacuating the plane until that situation was addressed.

It is a fascinating story, although I am glad I did not experience it myself!

Modern “glass cockpit” small aircraft have so many engine sensors that you cant possibly monitor everything and still fly the plane. For example, you have a cylinder head and exhaust temp sender for each cylinder. All you can do is set limits and have a “master caution” light tell you when something is out of whack.

Airliners used to have a flight engineer to monitor the stuff on three and four engine planes because it was too much for two pilots to handle if things started going wrong, which was often in the pre-jet age.

In flight training, even for VFR, you spend some time learning to fly *without* looking at the gauges, if only to drive home the point that your senses lie to you big time when you can’t see the horizon. Then you practice “unusual attitudes” (from the airplane, not the instructor) in order to know how to use the gauges alone (you’re wearing a visor that prevents you seeing outside) to get it back straight and level. Then, you practice the same with one or more gauges caged or covered. Pucker Factor Eleven!

In the blue, push it through, in the black pull it back, with regards to the attitude indicator and unusual attitude’s, I think in aircraft, even simple ones gauges and instruments are a fly or not fly situation, oil pressure gauge not working, don’t fly, oil temp in the red, make plans to be on the ground(preferably at an airport) and figure it out. in a car, I think that its a wash weather you have gauges or idiot lights as many gauge packages are really just dressed up idiot lights anymore, although in some cars like the corvette, it will give you an actual temp reading for oil and coolant and actual pressure for oil, but overall, I think this is lost on most people driving in cars today.

On my Mustang the gauges are essential although all it has is a coolant temp, oil pressure, and DC volts/charging. With no choke (someone removed the automatic one from the old 2 barrel) you have to sit there and goose it until the oil pressure gauge hits the the middle of the marks. You can also actually watch the oil pressure rise and fall with RPM and then after you shut it down the needle retreats slowly behind the “L” for low.

The GM trucks/SUVs in the district’s fleet had oil gauges that would respond to engine RPM and the gear you were in. I always found that oddly reassuring.

Fords from the late 1980’s on have the worst of both worlds, an “idiot” gauge. There is actually an oil pressure switch (normally open) in place of a true pressure sender, and a resistor to place the needle approximately in the middle of the gauge if oil pressure is above 5psi, and zero below that. The marketing people said that the customers wanted a gauge, the engineers thought otherwise. The needle does not rise and fall with rpms or oil temperature, but sits rock steady in the middle, until it drops instantly to zero on shutdown.

One thing that hasn’t been mentioned in this discussion is that all of the GMT930/931/932 vehicles that I’ve ever been in (All LT or LS models) had real honest gauges with a temp gauge that was marked with a degree range (not just “H” and “L”) and an oil pressure gauge with various PSI marked (again not just “H” and “L”) along with a digital transmission temp read out.

I may bash GM just as much as anyone else but I honestly think that was spot on and wish all automakers would do that.

The photo of the Checker instrument panel is an interesting choice for illustrating this entry. As a driver for Yellow Cab in Chicago we drove Checkers. As a contract driver I could give a rat’s ass about what the gauges read, even the speedometer. I was more concerned with whether I had working turn signals, quiet brakes, and functioning shocks. Never used the horn, besides, it rarely worked.

My 2010 CTS is the first car I’ve had with an oil pressure gauge since the ’74 Celica I bought when I was in high school. The pressure will register lower when the car is idling, then climb when you accelerate, and the pressure will read higher when the engine is cold and the oil is thicker.

My preference would be to have the full gauge set with the warning lamps, but I’m ok without an ammeter or oil pressure.

I do like having an engine temperature gauge. In fact, just the other day we had a major highway shut down in the St. Louis area and as I was sitting in bumper to bumper traffic, the temp gauge on the subaru started climbing towards “HOT.” I’m a worry wart about this car and resorted to turning on the heat. It was unbearable! But the engine temp came back down. I’m sure the engine would have been just fine in the higher realms of operating temperature but it was cheap insurance.

I agree with the other comment above about the generic nature of the check engine light. There is no reason that car manufacturers couldn’t give drivers more information on the dash. Maybe even tie in the generic P-codes and make them available via a menu.

I’d also argue for the need to have a “GET OFF THE ROAD AND STOP ENGINE NOW” warning light for that one time in your life when an oil pump catastrophically fails.

“There is no reason that car manufacturers couldn’t give drivers more information on the dash.”

Actually, there is a reason. They’re prohibited from doing so.

The “check engine” light is controlled by emissions regulations. And since rational people would delay checking/repairs if they knew the problem being reported wasn’t immediately urgent, it’s against the rules for the warning to provide any degree of relative urgency. So you get the same “check engine” light for a loose gas cap, a failed CatCon, and anything/everything in between.

No the EPA mandates a 2 stage CEL system. If the light comes on steady your owner’s manual will say to take it to the dealer soon. If it flashes it will say something like stop the vehicle when safe and have it towed to the dealer. The flashing indicates that there is something that could cause damage to the engine or overheat the cat and start a fire.

Some new vehicles have a separate check gas cap light or that will come up in the in dash display. They had too many people coming in for warranty work due to a CEL caused by an loose gas cap.

On the Cadillac Digital Fuel Injection by pressing buttons on the climate control panel you could make the vehicle show the codes, actual numbers on the screen, clear the CEL or pull up and monitor some of the computer’s inputs and outputs. It was the start of truly modern EFI.

It’s all the more a shame; the preceding 105 coupe had, in 1750 form, the nicest binnacle, and coupled with the series II 1750 centre console made it one of the best cockpit driving experiences of my life.

Having owned a $510 Caprice, an older Voyager, and currently a slightly newer Caravan I like having gauges because I am used to finicky vehicles. Before starting my vehicle I make sure the idiot lights work and scan the gauge cluster while driving. A coolant gauge is a must for me and knowing other info with more gauges would be nice. I have always been able to hear my vehicle’s engines so a tach is not needed. Commercial vehicles still need a full set of gauges.

“Sudden drop in oil pressure? You’re more likely to be hit by an asteroid.” WRRONGG!

My ’87 Celica’s oil filter suddenly came loose under full-throttle acceleration up a freeway ramp one morning. The first hint was it didn’t sound quite right, quick glance down to the full set of gauges, Zero Oil Pressure! Oh S#!^!!! Hit the key! Too late. Total top end rebuild on a one year old DOHC engine (sniff).

An idiot light would have been just the thing for this situation.

Or better yet…one of the countless great things about the ’77 Honda Civic CVCC is its electric fuel pump, which is wired through the oil pressure sender circuit. No oil pressure = no gas.

Don’t kid yourself…..You would have no more seen that idiot light, than the pressure dropping on the guage…. Now if the idiot light or guage was hooked up to an audible buzzer….maybe?
And another thing..very, very very few folks ever even look at their dashboard display.
Was a passenger in a vehicle the other day. Happened to look over at the display and noticed the engine light was on. Asked the driver about it…said he hadn’t noticed it before….and didn’t have a clue what it meant. Like Paul said….fuggetabout it .

I remember that my father’s 1980’s Jetta Diesels and Turbo Diesels did have a buzzer combined with the oil pressure light.

My former 1991 Buick Park Avenue Ultra had both an oil pressure gauge and a light. One night, the light came on at a traffic light while I was listening to the radio and didn’t hear the engine noise. I was used to see the needle drop quite low at idle but the light never came on. I turned the volume down and heard the sound of the motor, I knew it was too late… I had to replace the motor.

The same happened in my 1967 Riviera GS 12 years ago. This one has an oil pressure gauge too and the needle never went very high, even at highway speeds. One day after I replaced the 5W30 with 15W40 oil, the oil pressure was much higher than usual at highway speeds so I didn’t mind going a bit faster than usual for a while. It didn’t take long before I heard a bad noise and saw the oil pressure drop again! I slowed down and was hoping to make it home (I had just a few miles to do) but the engine literally exploded as I was reaching the legal speed limit! I found a huge chunk was missing from the block and a 90° bent connecting rod went through the frame… So it was too late for this one too!

He said in “modern cars”. Your ’87 Celica is about 20 yrs too old to qualify as modern.

In 25 yrs of driving, I have had exactly one oil filter fail on me, and it didn’t “come loose and fall off”. Right after an oil change as the car was started, the filter just broke and oil start spilling out all over the lift. The tech turned the car off and said something about that being why they test run the car before taking it off the lift, the filters will occasionally fail. And even that incident was like 10 yrs ago.

Many GM and Ford vehicles with electric fuel pumps and carburetors use a oil pressure switch to control the fuel pump. The problem is when the vehicle sits for an extended period of time, the fuel in the carb evaporates, and the battery is a little weak from sitting. It can take a lot of slow cranking to build pressure high enough to activate the fuel pump. I really need to rig up a bypass for that for my F350 because it will sometimes sit for months at a time. More than once I’ve had to give it a boost or jump start because the battery gave out before the oil pressure was high enough.

I always like to see what’s going on in the car so I’d rather have a full complement of gauges. I really like oil temperature gauges since they give a better picture of what’s going on in your engine. I could tell when my 84 Jetta was a quart low on oil just by looking at the oil temp gauge.

Yes many cars now use return-less fuel systems that vary the pump speed to get the desired pressure and volume. So they have pressure sensors to operate the pump and it will set a CEL if the fuel pressure is out of the expected or commanded range.

My 88 Diplomat had the best option- gauges and lights. Only once in the 4 years I owned it (in the late 90s) did it have a problem that would have registered on a gauge/light. The oil filter sprang a huge leak at the seam; but the smell and smoke from oil spraying on the Y-pipe alerted me first and I shut ‘er down before the oil pressure went away.
The more reliable and trouble-free a vehicle is, the more you need lights as well as gauges. I have to remind myself to scan all the gauges on my work truck. It’s a ’99 International 9200 and also has both gauges and lights.

Its unforgiveable that the new Challengers (and other LX-based cars) only come with temp and gas gauges on the base dash. No oil psi or electrical guage of any kind although if you get the UConnect you can scroll through to get the readings.

My oil pressure gage fluctuates on my 19 yo truck. That tells me it probably is not the modern idiot light with a needle. I watch it because I have had the misfortune to lose two cars on Houston freeways when hoses broke and I couldn’t get off. Idiot light didn’t work either time. Once was at the start of the Houston ship channel bridge and I began to smell something just after starting the climb. I would fry it all over again before I would stop there.

I now have something that has been noted for frying head gaskets. I appreciate the gages and give them a lot of observation time.

May I relate how a gauge cost me an engine? My first car was a forest green VW 1300. Of course i liked my first car and wanted to make it a little nicer. I mean it had a few magnetic beetles living on the dash but that didn’t count. At a flea market I found 2 VDO gauges, one clock and one oil temperature gauge. I mounted them next to the speedo. They looked nice and the clock was really helpful.
The oil temperature gauge required to replace the dip stick for one with thermistor built in and to run a wire from there to the gauge. You needed to transfer the dipstick marks to the new one. I was lucky: the marks were already there.
After my engine died I had a closer look at the set up: the new dipstick was a few cm longer and the previous owner lined up the bottoms of the dipsticks to transfer the marks. The proper way of course is to line up the tops of the dipsticks when you transfer the marks.
o.k., I saw the idiot light flicker, but the dipstick said there is plenty oil………

A friend of mine is high school had a ’71 beetle which I think was the fastest unmodified VW of all time. He had fitted it with Recaro seats, some wide wheels and tires and it cornered as if “on rails” as we used to say. His signal to add oil was whenever the oil pressure light came on during a hard corner.

It’s a thoughtful question. While I like gauges as much as anyone else, realistically, in today’s world of ‘information displays’, drive-by-wire, computers that control everything, and production engines that are built to tolerances that could only be dreamt about back in the day, well, gauges really aren’t necessary. Besides the dreaded ‘service engine soon’, systems have become sophisticated enough that if some threshold even remotely critical is reached, the car simply will not start after it’s turned off until the situation is rectified. This wasn’t the case back in the infancy of the idiot light.

As an example, look at the dreaded loose gas cap that used to shut down cars all the time. Eventually, computers were programed to not panic at whatever tripped the warning and, now, if a gas cap is loose, the car understands it’s not a critical failure, tells you about it, and you get three tries to fix it before the car gets mad and posts an alert to the MFD that won’t go away without a trip to the dealership.

The only case of vehicles not starting because the computer sensed a critical problem are vehicles with fail safe cooling. Ford has used it for many years, once the cylinder head temp gets to a certain point the engine will switch to “air-cooled” operation and limit the top speed. It does this by alternately dropping every other cylinder in the firing order by not opening the fuel injector. Most of them are set to enter the air-cooled mode around 230-240. If the cylinder head temp gets high enough then the engine will shut down and not restart until it has cooled sufficiently. Note it is a cylinder head temp sensor screwed into a blind hole in the head that reads the actual temp of the aluminum and not the coolant. This way it still gets a proper reading even if the coolant is low or all gone.

Things come and go. From a monitoring standpoint, lights combined with gauges obviously give you the best of all worlds. I like to drive my cars into the ground, and the gauges on my 2002 Durango have come in handy when towing and / or explaining problems to the shop.

I’m sure lights seemed modern and cool when they came out, and the old cold / hot lights are very cool – and functional as some have noted.

Monitoring the temp gauge on a ’93 rental Caprice on the strip in Vegas and later in the desert proved valuable in avoiding problems.

My 2012 F-150 has a very cool digital economy gauge and I find myself trying to hyper mile it, which I suppose is the point. Another feature I like is knowing what gear the six speed auto trans is in. I tend to better understand what kind of load I’m putting on it, and it is another tool in trying to maximize mileage.

In the big picture, some of what I do is not terribly important, but considering some of the VCR buttons on my truck I get no use from, I rather like my monitors and gauges as an entertainment device, and who knows, they may tell me something important some day!

I would prefer a set of real gauges plus lights to get your attention if needed. BUT, I realize how easy it can be to miss a gauge reading or even a glowing idiot light.. I recently learned that in my 2000 Silverado (which has a full set of seemingly real gauges, yay!) Stopped at my mail box and set the parking brake, which has never been very effective (a common GM truck rear disc brake “feature”). Got distracted and drove off, the 5.3 torque and 3.73 gears easily overpowering the weak parking brake. Got on the freeway, drove to work.. noticed a gradually worsening vibration and drop in throttle response… hmm, what’s going on..?? Finally realized what I’d done, DOH! Needless to say, the not-very-effective parking brake doesn’t do much at all now. Even so, I would still take real gauges if I could get ’em.

One feature I really liked about the much-maligned Cobalt is the selectable digital display. You could select voltage, oil pressure, or coolant temp, in addition to the analog temp gauge. It’s already in the computer, why not make it accessable?

I like full gauges. But that’s me, Im a gearhead. It irked me to no end that my PT cruiser didn’t come from the factory with a boost gauge, yet the SRT-4 did. Granted, its simple enough to install one yourself…I just never did get around to it.

There were some valid points on the Firebird thread, namely in electric gauges being basically churched up idiot lights. Ive swapped them out in my older Jeeps for analog/mechanical pieces as the originals went haywire. I distinctly remember finding a pristine ’84 CJ-7 Renegade that I wanted so bad I could literally taste it, My dad and I looked at it a few times, but once you got to rolling, the oil pressure would drop off. Well that might not have been TOO big an issue, had the price been $3k for a sick Jeep instead of $6K in 1990 dollars. Then my ’81 started the same thing. We took the cheap route and scrapped the factory OP for a ‘real’ one….60+ lbs of pressure on the freeway with a 90K mile 258 I-6. My Scrambler did the exact same thing.

As an enthusiast, I want more cars geared for me and those like me. However, that doesn’t mean EVERY car should be. Full instrumentation in a Challenger R/T is a no brainer. Instrumentation beyond speedo , fuel and temp in a Camry….useless as tits on a boar hog.

This is a real good point about so-called ‘gauges’ in many of the new cars. Ford, in particular, was using an oil pressure gauge that only had two readings: lined up in the middle to show there was ‘some’ oil pressure, or off to the left to show that the oil pressure had dropped down to below that level. To me, that was actually worse than an idiot gauge because, although it did the exact same thing, your were less likely to see it before it was too late.

I read that the rationale behind these ‘faux’ gauges was that, supposedly, customers were bringing in their vehicles for service based on the gauge fluctuating from low pressure at idle, to nominal pressure when operating at higher rpm (which is exactly what a real gauge is supposed to do). I don’t really buy that and suspect it was just another cost-cutting move in that the sending unit for an ‘idiot’ light (or gauge) is likely cheaper than one for a real gauge.

If we must have this proliferation of electronic gimcrackery in the dashboard, what I would like to see — at least for sporty cars and more upscale models — would be a reconfigurable “glass cockpit” IP: a basic essential-readouts-only mode (something Saab did in the ’90s for a while) with speed, fuel state, and warning lights; a full display mode with a set of analog-style gauges; and a customizable mode with a set of instrument slots to which you can assign your choice of displays. My mid-price touchscreen digital camera can do something like that, so it’s not a great technical challenge.

I would really like to see modern cars have proper analog temperature gauges with a useful set of markings and an integrated warning light/buzzer that engages if the temperature is actually going into the danger zone. I’m aware of the rationale for the idiot gauges, but I think some of that is a reflection of having the instrument panel designed by stylists rather than ergonomics engineers — too often, the gauge either has no markings other than “H” and “L,” and if it does, there’s no obvious way to tell what’s normal and what you should be worried about short of reading the shop manual. That’s a design problem. It’s true that a lot of people are still going to ignore even a well-marked gauge, but I’d really like to at least have the option.

For high-performance cars, I’d want to add a comparable set of oil pressure and oil temperature gauges, particularly on any model that an owner is likely to use for track days. Oiling systems that are perfectly adequate for street use are not necessarily suitable for sustained high speeds or repeated high-gee maneuvers, and the driver should at least have a chance of seeing that it’s time to call it a day before it becomes really expensive.

I think trucks and SUVs intended for towing should have the aforementioned sort of coolant temperature gauge plus an appropriately marked ammeter or voltmeter and a transmission temperature gauge. Hauling heavy loads over a mountain pass is not light-duty normal driving and knowing what the machinery is doing is useful insurance.

I also would not want to own a modern car without a tachometer, even with automatic transmission.

You read my mind…I meant to add that thought. I’ve wondered for year why the modern IP isn’t just a screen, with “apps” to configure it as one prefers. How hard or expensive can it be. It appears that the new MBZ S-Class has that, more or less, and I think the Tesla S maybe to some extent too. But how about full customization? It seems rather obvious.

My touchscreen camera (about which I admittedly have very mixed feelings) has six or so control positions at the sides of the display. There’s a default layout, but you can switch to the setup mode and it will give you a list of various controls (ISO speed, white balance, aperture, etc.) that you can assign to those slots. (The big annoyance is that it automatically assigns one slot to the video record button, which I will never use and don’t want to engage by accident because it sucks up power and memory card space at alarming rates.) If the IP display is electronic anyway, there’s no earthly reason not to offer the same thing.

I like speedo, tacho, temp and fuel; oil pressure and amps are nice but not essential IMHO. I think a coolant temp gauge is absolutely essential though, preferably tied into a light (or even better, an alarm) if the car got too hot.

Earlier this year, my Nissan blew the stainless steel fitting where the main coolant hose goes into the engine block – the fitting split lengthwise. I saw the gauge rising and was able to stop before serious damage occurred. Ditto when 5 coolant hoses and one more stainless fitting blew over the next 8 weeks while awaiting the new fittings and hose kit. I’d have been lost without a temp gauge!

But gauges aren’t always enough – my parents’ old ’96 Subaru Outback had a bit of road debri take out the bottom radiator hose; the motor seized before they noticed the gauge had rocketed up. Ironically, they just this week sold their ’07 Legacy wagon and bought a ’10 Outback wagon; turns out the ’10 onwards Outback has a light that turns orange if the engine’s overheating but no temp gauge…

I do like the three in one temp gauge in the 89 Jetta. Red light goes on if coolent level drops below the sensor probes. If you get a leak the light comes on even though the gauge still reads normal. So it comes on before the engine gets hot. It also comes on if the engine starts to get hot when the coolent level is OK but you didn’t notice the gauge rising. My 86 Jetta has a temp gauge only without level or hot flashing red light. It can be tricked. One time my water pump failed. The gauge failed to reach hot because no coolent was getting to sensor. The next morning, the car had no coolent. Luckily the engine was still OK. The Titan seems to have the “fake’ gauges with lights. The oil pressure will read high until engine warms up, but then remains steady in the center. The old Chevy would drop at idle as it warmed up. An old Rabbit with a bad piston rattle used oil badly, and a aftermarket oil pressure gauge was useful for telling me when it needed oil, the needle would shake a little around corners but the light still would not come on. It ran for years like that on straight 50wt. A driver running a red light finally did that car in.

I can’t get the gauges that I really want! A tyre pressure and a oil level gauge would be excellent. The minimum I prefer is speedo, fuel and temperature gauges, rest really are not needed for most circumstances .

Way back in the 80’s and on through the 90’s Ford had an oil level sensor on some of their vehicles. It would tell you when you were a quart low. Not sure why the dropped it. Some tire pressure sensors do transmit the actual pressure, and on some vehicles you can look at the pressures.

My Nissan, Citroen and Hillman all have temp gauges I dont run a fan in the Hillman so the temp gauge actually serves a function the oil pressure gauge in the Minx works well too its replacement 1600 engine holds 45psi at hot idle previous engine was 0 at idle hot the ammeter works fine and being an old bomb I rely on the gauges. The coolant light in my Citroen comes on occasionally however as long as the temp id ok I ignore it as all it signifies is the sensor has got dry and the header tank is low so I top it up I use the revcounter constantly its more accurate than the speedo. Nothing ever seems to go wrong with the Nissan and the gauges all work fine
It was Henry Ford who said he would never fit an oil gauge to a car because it would scare people maybe he was right.

My 2007 Pontiac Solstice came without a engine coolant temperature gauge. I like to know when the engine is warmed up, and when it starts to run hot. But unfortuntale the car only had a “now it is too late light” to indicate the engine running hot.
So I bought a relatively cheap Ultra-Gauge which connects to the OBD port.
Problem solved.

That’s the best answer I’ve run across. Ran out or almost ran out of gas several times while running service. Focus on the job makes one forget other things. I have had ADHD all my life so I was a natural anyway.

It might have shown something in the Saab I burned up on a long high congested bridge by warning me before I got in the flow of traffic. The gauge sure didn’t speak loudly enough.

Depends on the car. My 63 VW has speedo and fuel gauge, and flickering oil light which is just fine.
My old 62 TR4 had big Jaeger Tach and speedo, and 4 small gauges, all beautiful with domed glass covers. Lovely.
Both our old 88 Ranger and 92 Topaz were manual without a tach, which was a bit annoying but we got used to it.
I like the combination of gauge and idiot light on modern cars.

I really think Paul is on to something with this getting hit by an asteroid business. If you could make an idiot light for that, or a gauge!!

Bring on the gauges! I scan mine all the time, and I know where they should be for different operating conditions, so I’ll have advance notice when something is going wrong. IMO, oil pressure is the only reading that requires both a gauge and a light.

My Chryslers only came with an ammeter. They have oil pressure and coolant HOT/COLD idiot lights. I installed aftermarket oil pressure, coolant temp and voltmeter gauges, plus my hardtop has a tach, vacuum gauge and eventually a wide-band O2 gauge for carb fine-tuning, when I get around to installing it. They still have the oil pressure idiot light connected as well.

My pickup has REAL gauges for tach, voltmeter, coolant temp and oil pressure. I added a pyrometer and boost gauge. Wishing I spent the extra bucks for a 3-gauge pod so I could also add transmission temperature too.

In my pickup (Cummins) the voltmeter dips when the preheater screen cycles on because they draw so much current. This is normal, but I heard that a lot of people took their trucks to the dealer thinking something was wrong. So on newer Cummins trucks, the voltmeter is controlled by the PCM, and when the preheater is on the PCM holds the reading at the last measured value so it doesn’t dip. That’s unfortunate, as the voltmeter can tell you if your preheater is functioning, provided you know what you’re looking at.

I’d like to add oil pressure and voltmeter gauges to my wife’s CR-V, but honestly it’s not high on my list of things to do, and there’s little room on the dashboard to add them discretely. I have a plug-in voltmeter that goes in the accessory socket for occasional checks.

How old are your Chryslers? My 1963 Plymouth had everything but the oil pressure gauge. Someone had installed one of those “knee freezer” add on air conditioners under the dash but apparently did not upgrade the cooling system. In stop and go traffic with the A/C on you could watch the temperature gauge climb rapidly. I quickly learned that the A/C was only for the open road as it would rapidly overheat at lower speeds.

I liked what Chrysler did in the 70s with the LED in each gauge. I agree with most that some decent gauges are a window into the inner works of the car. I particularly miss the old Mopar ammeters. They told you all kinds of things about your electrical systems that I have never matched with a voltmeter.

I miss a tach in our Panther cars. One would be helpful in diagnosis of vibrations and in transmission operation.

Victim of OCD that I am, a couple of years ago I performed my usual underhood inspection and not only verified that the coolant overflow tank was full but pulled the cap to make sure they system was full. Problem was I did not tighten completely.

That evening, I am on my was to meet some people for dinner, and frankly paying attention to rush hour traffic when I hear a chime. Good thing my 2004 PT Cruiser had both a temp gauge (which I obviously was not including in my scan) and a high temp light along with a chime. Of course, had I been paying better attention I would have thought something was amiss when about five minutes before I began to hear the drive belt slipping, since it was being doused with coolant from the filler neck.

I recently bought an ’89 LaForza. What’s funny is that despite the full VDO gauge package, it doesn’t have separate turn indicators – just one light above the gauges that comes on whether for both the right and left blinkers.

It also has a brake light that comes on when your foot is on the brake.

> It also has a brake light that comes on when your foot is on the brake.

New cars could use that! Too often today I see cars driving with their brake lights on. I presume that the driver learned to drive using the right foot for gas and left foot for brake (tsk, tsk) and they’re resting their left foot on the brake pedal just hard enough to activate the lights.

Give me gauges or give me death! Or something like that. i like full gauges on my vehicles, and I watch them like a hawk. Drives me nut driving my Fairmont as it has a speedometer and a gas gauge and that’s it. Sooner or later I’ll have to install the tach and oil/temp/volt gauges I bought last year from Summit.

I have long wondered about the “flat spot” on modern Temp gauges, that explains a lot since I had trouble believing that even the Japanese could regulate coolant temp that well. When my ’88 Accord’s thermostat seized, the otherwise invariant Temp gauge suddenly came to life & went towards vertical; that warned me in time to pull over & stop the car. After cooling off, I made it home.

By contrast, my ’81 Escort’s Temp gauge was all over the place. I chalked it up to Ford’s incompetence, but the real problem was, from the factory it had a miscalibrated thermostat; after replacement it ran a lot cooler but the damage was done. Evidently they hadn’t gotten the message about 6σ yet.

I like the way they did it on old trucks – a nice big round speedo and around the speedo your basic gauges: gas, oil pressure, ammeter, and temp. gauge. This makes a very compact “cluster” and is easy to read; you can pretty much read everything every time you glance at the speed.

What I don’t like is gauges hidden behind the steering wheel. Some cars have a little binnacle in the center of the dash (Toyota Echo comes to mind, but there are others) so you have clear sight of the gauges.

I don’t need a tach, even with a stick. I really don’t understand a tach with automatics.

Speedometers need a lot more attention from manufacturers. My wife’s ’04 CR-V for example has a 150 mph speedo. Not really necessary, as I rarely try to keep up with Corvettes. Worse though, is that it’s not marked well. The numbers jump in units of 20 mph, with a little line for 10, 30, 50, etc. Most speed limits have a 5 on the end so a line to rest the needle on would be great when doing 35, 45, etc.

I actually look at my gauges while I drive (to the extent I have them) on my own vehicles and on the work truck. I only look at the gas gauge once, first thing, unless I’m on a lengthy trip.

That’s a very good point with speedometers, most cars have limiters that come on well before the highest number anyway. The current V6 Mustangs instantly come to mind which have fuel cutoff at 118mph IIRC, yet they come standard with a 160 mph speedo!!! It was only 10 years ago the 390 horsepower SVT Cobra had a 160 mph speedo, the GT and V6 were 150 and 120 respectively, which made much more sense and still makes sense, even with the more powerful engines of today.

True confession: I just had to go out to my car to check what gauges it had. I knew about the speedo, tach and fuel gauge, just couldn’t remember what else was there (’05 Mazda 3 Maxx Sport).
Anyone else that couldn’t remember?

yep! had to count them all up from memory and used all ten fingers and thumbs… actually DO HAVE at least TEN of the darned things on my dragster T bucket (rev counter, fuel pressure, fuel level, manifold vacuum/boost, speedo/odo, water temp, EGT, cyl head temp, oil temp, oil pressure, volts, amps) actually that’s 12! ..it’s a boosted engine and easy to cook and destroy so these are needed to watch how it is going.. the first engine died through poor handling by a former owner (overheated and seized) ..it was an SBC 400 …however with siamesed bores these are difficult to cool under any circumstances let alone with a small radiator so can’t blame the dude too much

has anyone had experience with the ‘Snow Boost’ engine cooler system??

my first supercharged engine was destroyed by a mal-wired ‘Snow Boost’ ..under ‘ignition on’ it was operating …result a hydraulicing ocurred and on start-up ‘bang’ a bent rod .. .. .. .. (that was a 4.0 Coon VCT engine)

you can actually see it still “running” LOL on ‘You Tube’ ..sounding like a very loud diesel tractor engine…

put into the search bar of ‘You Tube’ the following words… “Ford Falcon VCT Tickford Engine Destroyed By Beaurepaires”

It’s nice to have full gauges, but I’ve never found it to be a necessity. The only time I would want oil pressure and oil temp gauges is if I was racing the car. A water temp gauge is nice to have though, as with a few of my older cars I’ve managed to address overheating issues without getting caught off guard.

I’m currently driving a 2012 Volkswagen ‘up!’ and it’s the only car I’ve owned that doesn’t have a temp gauge. Just a tach and fuel gauge. However, my up! is specced with a removable infotainment device called ‘Maps & More’. It’s basically a gps that streams bluetooth calls and such. It also has a water temp gauge and an extra tach. (because one isn’t enough I guess) So if you buy an up! and feel compelled to look at the water temp, (that never moves from dead center when the engine is running) you need to order a removable dash-mounted infotainment device to see it. Strange!

Just try sitting through a midwestern winter WITHOUT a temperature gauge:
you need that thing to try and wish it upwards and get that heat blowing in the morning.
You spend the first 20 min watching that thing, looking, waiting, and hoping.
[I know, you’ve now all got heated seats…]

It’s bad enough in the relatively mild mid-atlantic winters without heated seats, it’s gotta be five times worse out there. It’ll be interesting this winter to see if the ones in the Volvo actually work… (only the oldest of my three cars actually has them and I’ve not had it through a cold season to test!)

I believe that while warning lights are a fine supplement to the gauges, they’re a poor substitute to the gauges. The reason is this: Warning lights only tell you “hot” and “cold”, “charged” and “discharged”, etc. Gauges, on the other hand, whether they’re digital or analogue, actually show you where in between the two extremes you are. They tell you *how* warm the engine is, or *how* charged the battery is. So yeah, I think gauges are just as relevant today as they were 60 yrs ago. Can you imagine if all you had to tell you the fuel level was a warning light showing *red* for “empty” and *blue* for “full”, but nothing to indicate where you were in between, that way you know how far you can drive before you need to refuel? Answer that one.

My second new car was the first US spec version of the VW GTi which in addition to the speedo, tach, fuel and coolant temp gauges also featured a mini console with a clock, voltmeter (not ammeter) and an oil temp gauge. My best friend from high school fried his nice BMW 2002 because he ran the coolant dry and always maintained that had he had the oil temp gauge it could have been saved.

That’s not bad. It’s better than warning lights. Are gauges perfect? No, they’re not. I had a fuel gauge fail on me, the only time it seemed to work was when I filled up the fuel tank. I still prefer gauges over warning lights.